Humans are social animals, so they need each other for emotional development, practical learning, and sharing opinions. Therefore, socialization between humans is significant for positive growth and development. The connection humans share helps them maneuver through life’s tribulations with courage and strength. Therefore, if humans lived alone and in isolation, it would be easier to tackle life problems. Hence, human life would have been extinct. In as much as human socialization is valued, some instances promote the idea of individualism and privacy, for instance, when dealing with a public health concern such as in the case of Covid-19 (Farr, 2020). In the modern industrial world, due to existing social platforms, people tend to believe that individualism, personal freedom, and privacy are essential to bringing significant happiness. However, this belief is not correct and is rather selfish since once these ideas are realized, they tend to bring much negativity into people’s lives, as evidenced by the Covid-19 era.
The covid-19 era was a period marked by significant social distancing. Hence individualism and privacy were highly utilized. These aspects were only crucial to curbing the spread of the Coronavirus infection. Therefore, the individuality, privacy, and lack of personal freedom instituted during this time had a specific Goal, as it was meant to serve for a short while so that the virus would be effectively managed (Ogihara & Uchida, 2014). Implementing the social distancing technique significantly affected people’s connections since it affected how people connected (Farr, 2020). This is because the individualism, privacy, and personal freedom experienced during Covid 19 made people realize that they would still be comfortable without one another.
This comfortability helped at some point, for instance, in the reduction of some ugly physical confrontations. The connection already shifted to online social platforms. The online connection contributed to people faking life so they would be admired b others (Ogihara & Uchida, 2014). The nonexistence of physical judgments supported this faking since online people do not know an individual’s real life. This form of life is what people thought promoted happiness (Ogihara & Uchida, 2014). However, this was not the case, as fake life happiness was short-lived and negatively affected individual well-being.
Moreover, living an individualistic and private life is contrary to the sociable nature of human beings. So, it is a selfish decision to destroy the significant connection between people. Therefore, in as much the Covid 19 social distancing measure was adequate in preventing the spread of the virus, it was also a selfish and unsociable measure that greatly affected peoples’ significant connections (Soga, Evans, Cox, & Gaston, 2021). The loss of people’s connection and sociability is a worrying state since it tends to create a world without significant humanity, and people fail to help one another in times of need, making the world an uninhabitable place.
Additionally, family and friendship bonds are well maintained through physical contact, such that when these contacts are nonexistent, the bonds tend to break easily. Covid-19 advocated for the elimination of physical contact and the encouragement of social distancing, and this threatened the breaking of such bonds (Soga, Evans, Cox, & Gaston, 2021). However, despite most families not interacting physically, online interactions through various social media platforms were a great way of keeping these bonds lively. The online interactions would be used to do fun activities such as cooking and virtually listen to each other’s concerns (Tibbetts, Epstein-Shuman, Leitao, & Kushlev, 2021). So, from this experience, it is evident that even though the physical connection was threatened during Covid-19, the connections between family and friends were still strong thanks to the tremendous technological development that made it easy to use smartphones and the internet for social connections (Tibbetts, Epstein-Shuman, Leitao, & Kushlev, 2021). Since the online connection worked perfectly during and post covid-19, this is the only primary practice significant in maintaining relationships and human social connections despite locations, age gap, and kinship.
In conclusion, since human social bonds are vital, any practice, despite it being online or physical, that is geared towards improving human bonds should be encouraged. Encouragement is vital in ensuring humans value the existence of each other. This would help ensure that the world is a habitable place by being able to tackle life challenges and obstacles since it would be easy to help each other overcome the challenges.
References
Farr, C. (2020). The COVID-19 response must balance civil liberties and public health – experts explain how. Retrieved from https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/18/covid-19-response-vs-civil-liberties-striking-the-right-balance.html
Ogihara, Y., & Uchida, Y. (2014). Does individualism bring happiness? Adverse effects of individualism on interpersonal relationships and happiness. Frontiers in Psychology, 5. Doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00135
Soga, M., Evans, M. J., Cox, D. T., & Gaston, K. J. (2021). Impacts of the Covid‐19 pandemic on Human–Nature Interactions: Pathways, evidence, and implications. People and Nature, 3(3), 518–527. Doi:10.1002/pan3.10201
Tibbetts, M., Epstein-Shuman, A., Leitao, M., & Kushlev, K. (2021). A week during COVID-19: Online social interactions are associated with greater connection and stress. Computers in Human Behavior Reports, p. 4, 100133. Doi: 10.1016/j.chbr.2021.100133
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